Noname – “Rainforest”
Noname has provided enough proof of her singular ability as a rapper since her 2016 mixtape, Telephone. Playing out with prose, poetry and hip hop—like a velvet-voiced wit juggler—she keeps on showing how to sort out micro and macro woes in the space of a beat. “Rainforest” takes off as a warming bossa nova that would fit just fine in the elevator soundtrack. But it takes no more than 8 bars until the 29-year-old rapper goes back and forth between lovesickness to rage against millionaires. “Rainforest” is a melancholic manifesto with aftertaste: when hard times come and melancholy takes over, the revolution urges. —Felipe Maia